Not only can art be a tool of totalitarian power, but in post modern times , art and power may even be the same. A very, very strong case can be made that Hitler saw himself as a frustrated artist, and hence he chose a different canvas ie Europe/Africa/and the Middle East on which to paint.- Here lays the slippery slope of relativism - Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder, but who is the beholder? In Western Society, art and politics have been fighting it out for 2400 years, and it is not always comfortable when they overlap.

Their legs moved like scissors as instructor Adib Mattar counted out the beats.

"1-2-3-4. Move forward. Stomp. Stomp. And now back," Mattar, 25, shouted Sunday as he tried to lead the group of 14 young Arab- and Jewish-Americans in the debke, a traditional, rapid Middle Eastern dance.

Though their dance moves were not always in sync, this group of Central Florida high-school and college students was in harmony, linking arms and sweating together, despite holding many different opinions on the war in Iraq.

On April 13, the dance troupe will perform two routines at a multicultural show sponsored by Seedsof Peace, an organization that brings together Arab and Jewish young people to break the cycle of Middle East violence.

Scientists are coming around to the idea that art can heal. But don't listen to them: Just talk to a cancer patient who is finally smiling again.

Steven Winn, Chronicle Arts and Culture Critic

"I'm just feeling empty," Christine Morrison told a group of fellow cancer patients at San Francisco's Mount Zion Hospital, her voice flat and face all but affectless. Ten minutes later she picked up a brush and started to paint.

Morrison was headed where thousands go every day -- to the arts in search of healing. It happens in hospitals and concert halls, dance studios and nursing homes. Heart patients, trauma victims, people with Alzheimer's and the emotionally wounded pursue the age-old belief that art can help repair what hurts them. It's a huge and multifaceted trend in the arts, complex and controversial.

Poet Robert Lowell put the question this way: "Is getting well ever an art,/ or art a way to get well?"

Any discussion of the arts and healing involves a certain tension, a sense of uncomfortably crossed purposes. In the purist's view, art is not something to be prescribed or tailored to a purpose, no matter how worthy. It simply exists, radiantly free of any objective other than to be the truest and deepest expression it can be. Anything else corrupts and exploits it.

Believers with varied theories attest to the healing power of art, the language that speaks to the mind and body for the renewal of life.

Steven Winn, Chronicle Arts and Culture Critic

All roads in the vast healing arts movement lead eventually to choreographer Anna Halprin's Marin County hillside home, studio and legendary dance deck in Kentfield. There, for more than 30 years, Halprin has been working out the dynamic of art's multidimensional power to heal mind and body, which many believe in but few have experienced in such a visceral, immediate way.

In 1972, Halprin drew a self-portrait that envisioned a blurry gray area in her pelvis. Resisting her customary working method of dancing what she'd drawn, Halprin woke up with a queasy feeling in the middle of the night, made a doctor's appointment and discovered that she had a malignant tumor. After chemotherapy, her doctor declared her cured.

WAU, Sudan - In Sudan, a tribal dance is usually a private affair, off-limits to outsiders. <a href=http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030727/ap_on_re_af/make_dance_not_war_1 target=_blank>more on Yahoo</a>

The people's theatre In the aftermath of the recent conflict, Basim Jabur is bringing theatre and free speech back to Iraq, writes Rosie Garthwaite for The Stage

In a quiet corner of the shell that was once the ominous Iraqi Ministry of Defence sits the Theatre of the People. Though looted and vandalised, it harks back to the art deco style of the last days of the British regime in which it was built. Here a company of players has gathered to produce and perform 'free culture and free theatre' for the first time since 1958.

Broadway tourism back to pre-9/11 levelBy Judd Hollander for The Stage

After four years, the number of foreign tourists coming to Broadway has finally reached its pre-September 11, 2001 level, according to the League of American Theaters and Producers’ annual report.

During the 2004/5 season, 1,302,590 international visitors attended a Broadway show. That total is on a par with figures for 1999-2000 of 1,320,617. It marks a significant improvement on figures from 2000/1 to 2003/4, which were 1,106,284, 525,834, 651,093 and 1,241,786, respectively.

His support for Palestine has prompted outrage in his native Israel but has spawned his greatest passion - his Arab/Israeli orchestra. Now, in this year's Reith lectures, he will tell how music can bring harmony to a divided world.

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